Latour Litanizer

I am just now discovering Ian Bogost’s Latour Litanizer which he created back in December of 2009. Bogost’s Latour Litanizer generates random lists of objects drawn from wikipedia. Now, it seems to me that there is something philosophically important going on with the Latour Litany. Latour litanies are not simply amusing lists of objects, but do important philosophical work by performing a sort of object-oriented epoché. Often when philosophers speak of objects– including object-oriented ontologists –we use the blanket term “object” without referring to any specific or concrete objects.

The danger here is that discussions of objects are implicitly governed by a prototype object that functions as the representative of all objects. Cognitive psychologists treat prototypes as specific examples that function as representatives of abstract concepts. Think back to the 80’s and the dire Reagan revolution. Many readers will recall all the talk of “welfare queens” that continues down to this day in discussions of social programs. Welfare queens were mythological single women on welfare who had multiple children (to get larger welfare checks, the story goes) and who used their money to buy expensive things like cadillacs. In short, the non-existent welfare queen came to function as a prototype or exemplary instance representing all people on welfare. This prototype caused much mischief in welfare debates and subsequent legislative reforms.

Here then we encounter the importance of Latour’s litanies. What Latour’s litanies effectively accomplish is an annulment of prototypes that come to stand for the being and nature of all objects. Through the creation of a litany of heterogeneous objects, the object theorist is forced to think that heterogeneity as such rather than implicitly (and often unconsciously) drawing on one prototypical object that functions as the representative of the nature of all objects. Here we might think of Borges’ entry from a Chinese encyclopedia discussed so brilliantly at the beginning of The Order of Things. The Latour litany is a technique for thinking this a-topos, this heterotopia, that follows from the central claims of flat ontology. And this task is accomplished all the better with a randomizer such as Bogost’s Latour Litanizer which confronts the thinker with heterotopic configurations of objects not of her own making, demanding the thought of this heterotopia. I’ve placed Bogost’s important piece of philosophical technology– and it is a piece of philosophical technology, not unlike a microscope for the biologist –in my blogroll. Experiment with it. Bogost’s Latour Litanizer might be the first genuine piece of laboratory equipment ever created for philosophy.

[…] and combines various objects from wikipedia articles. I read about this over at (my favourite blog) Larval Subjects. For people who are interested in what Levi Bryant and others call a “flat ontology” […]

Could we say (in proto Heideggerian)that we should be wary when talking about an objects for an other object to withdraw from the scene, Hence when talking of a prototype we should force ourselves to bring other objects in to reveal-ation. Hence, as an example, in Melbourne at the moment we are struggling with knife crime. The prototype has become the knife wielding, often Asian criminal. But for this to emerge other objects are withdrawn from the discussion. As the prototype dominates the discussion and leads to all forms of racist inspired immigration claims, nobody is talking about train stations, nightclub lighting, videogames or hairstyles. As with many ethical dilemmas we seem to often look in the wrong places, closing down and simplifying the debate to ineffectiveness.

Levi, I would actually go a bit further and delete Jarrod’s link outright. Your warning is nice, but didn’t alert me that Jarrod’s link would actually crash my machine. I thought it was silly and juvenile of him.

A thought too big for a comment (indeed, my dissertation advisor has told me something like this could well be my project!):

I’ve always thought the name “Latour Litany,” while catchy and certainly not wrong (Latour uses litanies quite well!), was vaguely unsatisfying, because for me, the most exemplary litanizer is without a doubt Walt Whitman. If we started with Whitman, I don’t think there’d be any question about whether litanies are “philosophically important” or “fairly minor stylistic devices.” The litany is where Whitman’s whole “philosophical” (he doesn’t like that word, but broadly speaking I think it fits him) project begins and ends!

That reading of Whitman might not be uncontroversial, but it seems at least to be a fairly common one. Perhaps of interest to OOO/SR folks, it’s exactly what Deleuze sees as most important about Whitman (and “Whitman,” in *Essays Critical and Clinical*, contains some great litanies: “a battle, convoys of cattle, successive swarms of bumblebees”). When it comes to his reading of Whitman qua reading of Whitman, one could put some pointed questions to Deleuze, but I think that essay would also be an important one to consider if OOO/SR-ers are still interested in the question of whether or not Deleuze is a relationalist, or what sort of relationalist he is, or what the possibilities and limits of relationalism are.

Nathan, just to clarify, neither myself nor Graham have suggested that Latour “invented” the litany, nor that he is even necessarily the best philosophical example of them. But as far as a name goes for the *form*, I’m quite content with it.

Interesting stuff here, Nathan. As I understand it, Bennett is currently working on Whitman along these lines. I think there are a couple of different ways of reading Deleuze and that it is deeply unclear as to whether he’s an ontological relationist or not. In his early work, of course, he emphasized that relations are always external to their terms. In his later work with Guattari he shifts towards assemblages of objects. This is highly amenable to the thesis that relations are not, for Deleuze, internal or domestic relations (as Harman calls them), but external and foreign relations. The case is not straightforward, however, as he is also strongly drawn to a Spinozist style metaphysical monism where all objects are treated as mere predicates or properties (modes) of a single substance. My work can, in many ways, be read as a decision to treat Deleuze’s virtual multiplicities as discrete objects that are not defined by internal or domestic relations to everything else.

Ian, no clarification necessary! Of course nobody thinks Latour invented the litany. After all, Harman is always posting examples from Gibbon, Brentano and his students, even Plotinus – all obviously pre-Latour (and mostly pre-Whitman). Less frequently stressed (in the very limited bit of writing on this I’ve seen) is that he might not be “the best philosophical example,” but I’ll take your word for it that you believe it. My point wasn’t that the name should be changed or anything. You got there first and there are lots of reasons your name is a good one. I was just making public the private reaction I have whenever I see it because I thought it might illuminate the philosophical point the post was getting at.

Levi, indeed, the person I called my “dissertation advisor” above is one Jane Bennett. She’s the one who taught me my Whitman, pointed me to Deleuze’s essay on the subject, and obviously shapes my thinking in a lot of other ways. The reason I flagged the that essay is because there Deleuze “straightforwardly” says (italicizes, even): “relations are external to their terms,” while talking about concrete regular stuff – fragments which, he says, come before the whole. But in the context of the rest of Deleuze’s writing (and indeed in the context of the rest of that essay) though, things get less straightforward, you’re absolutely right.

That’s why I said the essay would be an important one to consider for the debate – I certainly don’t think it would solve the debate. I can’t say I always understand what the debate is. A perhaps unnecessary disclaimer in light of Harman’s post early today: I read this blog and Ian Bogost’s blog occasionally, but I haven’t read either of your books. I read Harman’s blog, and I’ve read Tool Being and some essays and started but not finished Prince of Networks. But I really think all this is unnecessary, because I’m not trying to critique, even mildly, anybody. I go back and forth on how I feel about Deleuze, and right now he’s not crucial for me anyway. I have no skin in this game. I’m just an interested observer. Promise!

[…] I was a little disappointed to learn, somewhat later, that there was already a name for these lists of things and objects (apparently a stylistic mainstay of not just Harman, but OOO in general): “Latour Litanies.” The term was coined by Ian Bogost in Alien Phenomenology, and quickly adopted by the other members of the OOO blogging community. I’ll admit to not liking the term very much (no offense to Bruno Latour) – it seems to me overly self-serious, to the point where I try to avoid having to say it aloud. This is no accident, of course. For OOO, this is serious business – amongst those theorists I have read thus far, it seems clear that the Latour Litany is seen as not merely stylistically salient, but philosophically important. From Levi Bryant’s blog: […]